The Sherwin-Rawcliffe Experiment - Evidence for Instant Action-at-a-distance

Since the nineteenth century physical theorists have considered that electromagnetic mass must exhibit tensor properties if causal delays characterize the interactions of electric charges. In 1960 Chalmers W. Sherwin and Robert D. Rawcliffe enlisted the help of mentors of the A. O. Nier highresolution mass spectrograph to test this hypothesis, using the predicted mass line-splitting of a football-shaped Lu 175 nucleus of spin 7/2 (a highly asymmetrical charge distribution). No line-splitting was observed. This null result showed that mass behaves in just the way Newton thought, as a scalar, never as a tensor. What, then went wrong with the theory? We argue that the basic assumption of retardation of distant action was at fault, and that the null result in fact provides strong inferential evidence of instant action-at-adistance of a Coulomb field.